issue 1 â‚Ź 10
white noise magazine www.whitenoisemag.com
fashion
displaced
spring&summer2011
white nois e
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a magazine for realistic da y d r e a m e r s
portraits by svetlana sobcenko dublin, ireland
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name one - just one -
accessory that doesn’t need another
too late, bygone, “could you please turn it off, mother?” stay still, focus, whilst naked, you won’t be recognized. what? who woke us? and why in the world are we being televised? “could you please turn it off, mother?” too late, bygone. the one that doesn’t need another just woke, for fun, and put the highs and lows together. got a perfect pitch luscious, rich, your eyes and ears aren’t ready. there’s too much, there’s lots (and lots), connect the dots, you cannot, can you?
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poem by elina adamson, tallinn, estonia
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You have tuned into the channel of White Noise. We collect, combine and filter different frequencies into one universe. We attract concepts, people and imaginations that are shrouded or nonsensical, only to make sense of w them. Our channel is obscure, poetic and slightly chaotic. Sometimes we scratch the surface, sometimes we dig deep, and sometimes we just don’t know. We’ve created a world that is floating in the clouds but maintains awareness of its surroundings.
We don’t only change with fashion - we change with everything. Fashion is in our hearts, but we also believe that its strongly connected to the mindsets of other arts. We provide you with the air to float through each frequency and find your own connection points. White Noise wants to disturb your intuition while still giving you the freedom to follow it.
-white noise-
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-white noise -
editor in chief anni truu
art director katrina cervoni
image manager zornitsa angelova
text manager juliette van oorschot
magazine manager robin straatman
contributing writers
elina adamson, peter beales, nicole malbeuf, sara kyurkchieva, violeta daulova, kai-davey bellin
contributing photographers
sanja marusic, katrina cervoni, elina abdrakhmanova, marc haers, monique francis
contributing artists
svetlana sobcenko, thijs van gasteren, veronique van oorschot, rutger termohlen, charlotte apers
printed by
www.silsdrukwerk.nl
white noise
mauritskade 11 1091 GC amsterdam the netherlands www.whitenoisemag.com
-table of contents -
12 chain of thoughts
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26 52
defective tea party
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utterly boring
83
chain of thoughts
cut & past
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curated canvas
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it was in the error
trash love song
34 chain of thoughts
10
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show your soul
a psychosomatic afternoon
32 when stillness lost its allure
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35 lost in translation
fashion defrosted
as seen on t. v.
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chain of thoughts
66 take a walk on the dark side
collage
78 63 loitering at the lloyd
boekie woekie
85 82
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chain of thoughts
i’ll bleach your memories
show your sou s painting classic vintage
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words by anni truu photos by katrina cervoni s
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With the new change in season, we highly recommend shedding some of your winter baggage. It’s time to strip away those layers and reveal what’s beneath. These truly trendy lemon-yellow handbags are the latest and greatest addition to any wardrobe. This season, display the new you on your shoulder.
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during a daydrift oh, how i’ve known you to sprout drifting through my thoughts like the purposeless waves in the ocean
(sp.)
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photosmodel by katrina cervoni mia castells
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recently, he had trouble remembering his own name.
collar by rutger termohlen painter, - breda, the netherlands
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smiling, the girl repeated the words ‘old fashioned’ over and over.
collar by veronique van oorschot - graphic designer & illustrator eindhoven, the netherlands
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collar by charlotte apers - illustrator - breda, the netherlands
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at home I looked at my face in the mirror. It was true: I looked terrible.
... dreamy like endless strawberry feilds
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by sara kyurkchieva london, uk
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it was in the err or white noise speaks to three artists of different mediums to discover their relationships with error in the creative process & result
words by katrina cervoni
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brian donnelly : d ripping within the lines The first time I met Brian and saw his work was when I was interning at his pieces in person Show & Tell Gallery for the first time, my in Toronto. Seeing attention and thoughts were engulfed in every glorious & precise detail.
For some reason, since your paintings are so precise, I have a hard time imagining you making a mistake. Do you usually cover up your mistakes? Sometimes there’s good mistakes and sometimes there’s bad mistakes. Any pencil work mistakes I cover up because I don’t like them to show. Sometimes there’s mistakes that you can’t fix. But for the most part, I try to cover up a lot of mistakes. Painting figures is a fickle thing. The audience tends to notice when you make mistakes. Whereas when you’re painting animals, no one really notices [mistakes]. No one really sees that because no one looks that closely at an animal. Do you ever feel confined by your audience in a way that makes you less willing to experiment? It’s kind of a dangerous area working in North America and painting nudes because people are pretty conservative in North America, so they respond totally differently. In Europe they don’t care. They’re actually looking at what you’re painting whereas North America can’t really get past the immediate visual. And how accurate it is... They start to get on accuracy and they really get hung up on nudity, which is really problematic for me. In Europe there has been a much better response. I suppose everyone can sort of agree that art is incredibly subjective - has anyone ever taken your work in a totally different context than what you initially intended? I prepare myself for the fact that everyone’s got their own baggage and they’re gonna bring their own ideas. And that’s half the fun. You end up talking to people and they’ll tell you everything they’re thinking about it, and none of those things are what you were thinking about when you started the work. But I always gain something from that.
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Totally. I remember Simon telling me something about your pieces when I first saw them and how everyone thought the white paint was cum. (Laughs) Yeah, that’s another popular misconception - I kind of enjoy it. A lot of people think it’s blood or cum. It’s not; I can Defense Merger,, Oil on canvas, 2010
see the equation. it’s just paint - I’m just being very, very literal; and people have a hard time dealing with people being really literal. Everyone’s expecting painting to be hiding something, like there’s something you’ve gotta figure out, like it’s a puzzle, and I guess to a degree that’s true, but I’m doing that in other ways. It’s like I’m a realist trying to paint surrealism. Which is a ridiculous concept but I only understand one thing one way at this point: and that’s realism. I spent years studying realism and what it is and how it actually works as opposed to the way people perceive it. Like, people think that as long as it looks real, it’s realism - which isn’t necessarily true. Realism is much deeper than that, but it’s kind of bastardized itself into this photorealistic equals realism thing, but realism is based in a lot of human things, like things you only notice about certain people. I remember seeing this great painting once: it was an egg tempera portrait of a man that had just finished his breakfast, and he was this overweight guy - and right in front of him is a kitchen table. There’s a plate with ketchup swirls where you can see that he’d just finished dragging toast and bacon bits through the swirls. And that’s what made the painting. It wasn’t so much that the guy looked exactly like he would look, it was the fact that in front of him was something he’d actually do and you understand it in that way.
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I want to say that you’ve sort of vandalized your pieces in a way. Like you have these perfect figurative paintings and you’ve pasted an animal head on them. Do you see it as a sort of vandalism? That’s a fair assessment of how it’s going down. When I first started doing it, I was thinking about vandalism. I was thinking about every textbook that was ever loaned to me high school; and you can’t open one without seeing a ballpoint pen drawing somewhere in the book. If there’s a dude in it, they will be involved in a weird gay orgy by the end of it. And it gets passed around from person to person. I thought about painting fully clothed people and then painting photo-realistic,
With that said, do you allow yourself to experiment or do you stay within lines that you set for yourself? Sometimes. I make a lot of changes in things, just to see if I can do it. Sometimes you have a model over and you’ll get images and it won’t work out in the way you want it to in the sense that they’ll have a haircut that doesn’t match what you wanna do, for example. So I’ve kind of pre-drawn things and made things up entirely. There was a painting from last year with a dog and a duck in its hand. And the girl had these long pigtails and they actually didn’t exist. They’re totally made up, but I like it a lot better with the pigtails; it changed something about the image. Because her hair cut was really cropped in the front and crazy and really long in the back, and I couldn’t make it work so I ended up just changing it. So I experiment a little bit. I try to experiment with the white [drips] as well. I try to find different ways of controlling it and mixing it on it’s own. It’s a pretty fine margin of where is exactly right. What’s the worst mistake you’ve ever made? I don’t know, for most of the mistakes I’ve made, I don’t even think of them as the worst. Like in my last relationship, where it totally failed but I can see how and why it failed. Even though it was a mistake, it totally balances out. You could say my last relationship was the best mistake I’ve ever made, because I ended up learning a lot of things that I just refused to know about myself. And I learned a lot of things about my practice because of that. Like, being in a relationship and trying to paint at the same time is really hard because you end up in this weird balancing act because I’m also working to support living and painting, so you add a relationship to that and you have to balance all three. It’s really tough to figure out. But when this relationship ended I realized I hadn’t actually given myself enough space to survive, to work, to really understand it was that I wanted to do with painting. I mean, over the last year I’ve been learning that slowly about myself. It’s been good, it’s been beneficial to my practice to be single. But yeah, I think I’ve learned from every mistake I’ve ever made.
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I’d rather have people walk away from a show thinking ‘what the fuck did I just see?’ than walking away going ‘well, that was nice...’
ridiculous, enlarged penises on them (laughs). I still float that idea around, it’s pretty funny: anyone can think of that and everyone’s borrowed a textbook in high school and seen a non-sensical dick drawing on it. I’d rather have people walk away from a show thinking “what the fuck did I just see?” than walking away going “well, that was nice.” I’d rather have an impression left on someone than make money.
s lim twig : fusing frequen cies Listening to his music puts you in a different world (even without the Slim Twig euphoniously influence of drugs). blends an evident array of musical tastes into one cinematic sound.
How much freedom do you allow yourself to experiment when you’re songwriting? Do you set certain rules for yourself or are you just free to do whatever? My style of songwriting is very phase oriented. A phase normally begins with an idea in my mind to reconcile different inspirations into a kind of uniform aesthetic. My first album Contempt! was very much an attempt to fuse a Wu-Tang influenced sample-based approach to more of an experimental songwriter ethos. I allow myself to experiment, but everything is contained within the initial concept. I suppose you could say I have lots of freedom, but always within a certain imposed framework. What’s the worst & best mistake you’ve ever made? I don’t know that mistakes are quantifiable as such, but I think it’s very important to allow room for mistakes to naturally occur within your work. In this way you collaborate with your environment. Why is it important for you collaborate with your environment? I don’t really think of it so much as important, as unavoidable. You can’t help but be shaped by your limitations, and for whatever reason this becomes almost like a gift. My environment often offers little surprises that initially present themselves as errors but ultimately serve to elevate the work outside of myself and my limited conscious capability. I’m thankful for them!
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If you had to listen to one song on repeat for the rest of today, what would it be? I’ve had an obsession with ‘Round & Round’ by the Delfonics for a while now. I could listen to that all day. What’s your relationship with the audience like when you’re preforming? When the show is a good one and the energy is high, I’m very aware of playing off that sensation. Other than that I try to focus on the task at hand... How about your relationship with the audience while you’re writing ? I try to indulge my own interests to the best of my ability, not let those ideas of what other people might like to hear me emulate seep in. I think there will be enough people who share my obsessions that if I just follow what makes sense to me there will be enough crossover with the outer world eventually. When I listen to your music, I sometimes feel like I’m in some kind of cinematic dream-land; in a twisted but lovely way. Where do your ideas for songs arise? Much of my music if very concept driven, particularly as I was going through that phase of sample based music. A Sheik In Scores was composed entirely from scraps of music from films, so in that way it was hard for it not to be cinematic sounding!
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My ideas for songs come from other songs to put it plainly. I am a student of pop music first and foremost, I am always forcing myself to learn new things about different styles of music. Music itself is the best motivator and inspiration, I’m always compelled to contribute my own take on certain traditions and hope that they are original enough to stand out.
How do you decide if an error or fuck-up is one to keep or one to throw away when you’re writing a new song? It’s always immediately apparent if a fuck up is contributing something special or is just a fuck up. When I’m writing a song, it implies it’s logic early on in the proceedings. That makes it very easy to tell when you’re going in the right direction, and it lets you know when you’re veering down a poor path. Songs are funny that way: they know what they need themselves.
Pop music sort of deals with what people know and expect, and you’re taking it and forming it into this new sound that’s drawing from a broad range of musical tastes and altering what people expect to hear. How do you feel towards pop and how does it influence your work? I've become more and more enamoured with the idea of pop music. I try to study it, to determine what works in certain songs and if they are elements that might work within my own. It is a tradition, it's fun to contribute to it. That element of expectation that people have when they realize they are experiencing a pop song is great, because it's the tension between that feeling and the experience of having those notions bent by the particular sensibility of the artist that is so exhilarating to try and produce. It’s that feeling of understanding the context to a degree, but also that sense of discovery within the vaguely familiar. That's become more exciting to me than hitting someone over the head with something they have no context of preconception of. It's more of a challenge in some respects.
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It’s that feeling of understanding the context to a degree, but also that sense of discovery within the vaguely familiar
amie dicke : a ltering the context of beaut y You really can’t flip through an independent magazine from the last couple of years and see in the print. White Noise this Amsterdam-based adores Amie for her artist’s name somewhere imagination to conjure beauty & feeling from accidents (and so much more).
When I look at your work, I think that it definitely provokes some kind of quiet violence. How do you see the world of fashion or the way other people view fashion? Even as a child I used magazines to wrap presents, to draw, to make collages, I really prefer the existing image, instead of the white canvas or a blank paper. Magazines were always around when I was younger. My Dad is an Interior Designer and my Mom is an artist and a stylist and so we had a lot of magazines in the house. I didn’t see them as something precious, they were always there, and they were there to use. I always used the images in fashion magazines to project my own feelings. I like to work in layers by adding or removing and sometimes a combination. In that sense I’m trying to create new space to be able to have more reflection or to be able to insert my personality in these images. I had a show at Galerie Diana Stigter that was called “The Violent Contradiction.” And that’s from a quote by George Bataille which is “truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.” The violent contradiction is something that’s in my work. It’s a part of being annoyed and irritated and frustrated with myself but also with images and objects surrounding me. Frustration is also necessary to be able to create something. So it’s kind of creating by destruction. I always see my work mostly personal and not as an attack to the fashion industry. I believe fashion is something that’s very inherent. The feelings that we have are natural feelings of what we think is beautiful or attractive, so I don’t see why I should blame the fashion industry for the way they use female models - I mean I don’t see that as something bad - but I see it as a bad part of me. That is something that I try to question. Why do I even buy the magazine? That’s where the ambiguity starts.
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When you’re adding and removing all of these things, how do you decide what to leave and what to keep? It’s constantly an accident. So my whole way of working is one big kind of disaster. It’s one failure after the other, but sometimes it results in a very happy accident. Like you wouldn’t have thought of it before you did something stupid. It’s a good stupidity.
There you go! Yes, but at the same time it can be so frustrating because sometimes you just want to have this feeling that you have control. That’s the constant struggle. Of course it’s very important to keep things inexplicit. Sometimes people say “that’s the nicest part of creating, that you don’t know what it’s going to be, everything is still possible.” And that’s true, but you’re really struggling and in the middle of that feeling, you don’t like it. But once you have this slight idea like you’re on a road to an idea, then suddenly it can be very nice again. So not knowing is feeling insecure, and feeling So you just kind of use your intuition to insecure is in general not a nice feeling. decide if you should cover something up or just leave it there? For you, what’s the beauty of removing Decision is such a strong word, something from it’s context? sometimes your mind decides and sometimes The funny thing is when you your hand decides. The word intuitive is of remove a page from a magazine, it’s still a course very important. At the same time you fashion magazine, so the context is still there, do make a lot of choices, but the moment you if there is a context. I think that it’s all very stop to think about it, then it becomes difficult superficial of course. I have this rule that I like to see. Sometimes it’s better to just do it. But to work within one image. I don’t really see the biggest problem can be that you just go too my work as collages because it’s always just far, there was this magical moment and then one image. Sometimes it’s a combination of you stop and then it’s gone. And that happens different materials. It’s more about materials. often. I think when taking things out of their context It was with an old Purple Magazine it’s good to be aware of the original source or that I already had for a few years here in state again. I think it can be very interesting my studio and I was working on these small to see how far you can take something out of scale postcards trying to cover them with it’s context, within its context. With the cutred ballpoint, and I started to do it to this outs, just by using what you’ve got, and just by magazine. But of course the ballpoint is removing parts, the story becomes different. metal point like a knife so you immediately go through the magazine. I didn’t think of it because it didn’t happen to the postcards, but with the magazine, because it’s totally soft, like a pie you go into it deeper and deeper. At one point the pen broke, and the red ink started to drip through it. These are the kind of accidents that you can’t think of in advance, suddenly it became this wound, and of course you can use the accidents and underline it, so afterwards I put a little more ink into this cut to make it a little bit stronger. The moment you try to recreate an accident, then it becomes very difficult to make it believable. I have tried to make more work like this, but it just didn’t work out. Do you kind of enjoy the feeling of not knowing when you’re making something? The only thing you know is that you don’t know. That’s a very famous saying by....I can’t think of who right now because I don’t know. (Laughs)
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You mentioned that you have the rule where you work with one image. When you’re making work, do set any more rules for yourself that you try to stay within or are you sort of free to do whatever? Yeah. I think that secretly I love rules (laughs). I like a certain directness. I like using existing materials. I like to work with the given. I started to understand that I could work with the given of a space. Until now I have been working a lot with galleries which is always the blank space. I now understand that the white space for me is not such a natural way to reflect or work in because it’s not the way I work. Not that I don’t like white (laughs). But I think that there’s so much in our world already that we could work with, so I don’t see the necessity to create a totally new image when there is already a lot of image given to us. I really like to be conscious of what’s there, and not to invent or make it more mystique. Of course you do put something extra, I mean it’s not all pure, pure intuition. You need to emphasize certain parts.
I t ’s o n e f a i l u r e a f t e r t h e o t h e r, b u t s o m e t i m e s i t results in a very happy accident -25
left & right: My Split Self, Ink and red ballpoint on magazine, 2010 Photo by Hans Georg Gaul Courtesy: Peres Projects, Berlin and Diana Stigter, Amsterdam
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sweater: american apparel
utterly e borin g photos by marc haers styling & concept by juliette van oorschot hair and make-up by jany de blaaij & laurie tuinhof models lisa don & danny van zon
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lisa bowie: episode vintage, blouse: monki, pants: vintage shoes: invito
danny bowie: episode, blouse: levis, pants: vintage shoes: american apparel
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lisa blouse & skirt: stylist’s own, clutch: monki, shoes: invito, socks: kunert cs
danny jacket: stylist’s own, pants: vintage, socks: kunert cs
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when still ness lost its allure considerably deep thoughts on time, fashion & film
words by anni truu
The concept of time in fashion is as abstract as time itself. There is no now: past is the future, and the future might as well be the present. The cycle of fashion is either spinning at full speed or almost standing still - there is no way to know which is right or wrong. How does one capture a snapshot of fashion when there are essentially no rules, and the rules that do exist are likely to be changed by the next moment to come? You could try to capture the moment to be felt on a photo. A photo is something carefully planned, aiming to capture the perfect moment that could vanish in a split second. An image freezes time and preserves the moment forever. Once captured, it will always exist, but will never be repeated again. Time stands still for that specific moment, even though each element in that photo will change in a one way or another. You have captured a moment, what now? Wait, the next moment is already here and the image has been replaced by another and forgotten. If there is one quality that defines fashion, it would be movement. Fashion is something that is never stopping and is constantly recreating itself. Moving picture is seemingly the perfect medium to catch the fluidity of fashion. The problem about film is that as fashion evolves organically, film is still an insincere mimic of reality and is therefore perfectly fabricated. Each scene is rehearsed, adjusted and planted by someone and is repeated as long as needed to catch the ideal moment. Film moves, but you can also pause and rewind it. In the time that it takes to perfectly capture that idealized and constructed moment results in a loss of time; moments in real life that pass by as real time continues to progress.
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Fashion has created its own time span for a film: a short impression that leaves you with a feeling that is gone in an instant. The short fashion film that rarely lasts longer than ten minutes displays an array of patterns, atmospheres and moods. In fact, two minutes would even be enough, as most of fashion films are simply decorated impressions without any purpose. Even still, a fashion photo in a magazine carries a story - something is changing and evolving. Fashion films are just visual effects, made up from empty moments. Although the fashion that is captured in these films is “up-to-date,” the result often lacks meaning. There just might be an ideal time dimension for fashion to be captured in socalled “real time”. Live streaming, for example, shows life as it happens without any delays or designed realities. It is something that is seen through the eyes of the viewer and because of this, we are able to conjure our own image from it. It’s constantly updated as fashion is, and is full of unexpected moments with rules that cannot be followed. Filled with interviews where real people act genuinely and experimentations without success, live
streaming leaves room for the mishaps of reality. Fashion is caught and presented as real as life is; now it’s time to move on. We are no longer interested in perfectly constructed realities; the static worlds of photo and film sets that we know are impossible to exist. Fashion is as sudden and instinctual as a spoken word in a conversation. The only genuine way to capture fashion is to present it as it happens. It cannot be paused, designed or rewind, it could only be replaced by the next to come.
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l all that matters is your
fascination,
which you scatter
while
going wild
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by violeta daulova sofia, bulgaria
lost in trans- l lation words by katrina cervoni painting anonymous
I caught a glimpse of this The unfinished piece is something that has a anonymous, discarded painting laying at the modest allure: it’s the space between what side of the street and was immediately drawn to you imagined and the actual result of your it. Upon first holding it, I couldn’t figure out why efforts. So, we are leaving up to you - our I found it so beautiful, but I snatched it anyway. readers - to reconcile the space between. I began to contemplate the strange beauty We have placed parts of this in something that’s unfinished. It’s almost unfinished masterpiece into one in every twelike admitting failure because you were too lve magazines. If you happened to discover a uninspired, busy or lazy to follow through with part of this painting in your copy, we are your initial intention. inviting you to recreate it in any way you’d like, Often these are the songs, pai l take a photo of your new creation (along with ntings, and poems get tossed into our a one sentence explaination), and send it to trash bins, never to reach our hands again. art@whitenoisemag.com. A compilation of the newly conceived pieces will be featured in our next issue as well as on our website. We can’t wait to see what you have in store for our l eyes and minds...
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psychosom atic afternoo n photos by monique francis styling by zornitsa angelova make up by eiza de geus hair by plamen kalekov model kristina serbakova
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dress: vintage
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skirt: vintage, blazer: vintage, top: stylist’s own
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hoodie: american apparel, top: stylist’s own
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bodysuit: alla kuzmyk
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shirt: blue blood, shorts: american apparel, cape: alla kuzmyk
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dress: vintage
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t.v. a series of images captured from a white noise film - shot with a 16mm camera & inspi red by ‘bad shots ‘ in 60’s cinematography film & stills by thijs van gasteren concept,photos & styling by katrina cervoni make-up by elber farö model birgit aarsman
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shoes, lambskin boa, necklace: stylist’s own, vest: stefanie ayoub
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below & right shoes: stylist’s own, blouse: american apparel
left tie: vintage, headscarf: vintage, tank: one teaspoon, skirt: vintage liz claibourne,
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left vest: stefanie ayoub, headscarf: vintage, lambskin boa, shoes, bodysuit: stylist’s own
above socks: stylist’s own, t-shirt: american apparel, skirt: stylist’s own
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left necklace: stylist’s own
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d efect-
ive tea party
photos by sanja marusic styling & concept by anni truu production by robin straatman grooming by carlos saidel model jorik smit
shirt: cos, boxers: cos, cardigan: cos, socks: henrik vibskov, shoes: church’s
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shirt: vintage, pants: american apparel, socks: american apparel, shoes: church’s
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shirt: american apparel, pants: cos
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shirt: denham, pants: american apparel, cardigan: vintage
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shirt: vintage, blazer: hans ubbink, pants: velour, shoes: church’s
shirt: velour, pants: acne, socks: henrik vibskov, shoes: church’s
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shirt: mads norgaard cophenhagen, boxers: cos, cardigan: cheap monday, socks: henrik vibskov
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shirt: cos, blazer: vintage
ask what he knows instead of what he doesn’t, and not why he doesn’t.
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by elina adamson tallinn, estonia
l oiter ing at t h e l l o y d
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For the designers of AMFI, it’s like another day at work: get inspired and design. But this time it’s not about clothing. Recently, a selection of AMFI designers have been given the assignment to design 63 hotel rooms, variable from one to five stars, for ‘The Exchange’ hotel. The Lloyd Hotel & Cultural Embassy in cooperation with the Amsterdam Fashion Institute are creating a new hotel on Damrak. The Exchange is part of ‘The red carpet”, a urban develop project to embellish Damrak. The hotel will involve beautiful combination of fashion and architecture. The Exchange is already in the fashion news. French VOGUE has said: It’s one of the must see hotels of 2011: ‘Luxe, marbre et volupté en vue’.
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photos by katrina cervoni text by robin straatman styling by anni truu model emma bjurstrom
The designers who have designed the rooms, are all graduates of the Amsterdam Fashion Institute. They were selected and responsible for the adornment of 63 new hotel rooms. The empty rooms are a birthplace for creations of any kind. The designers used Dutch craftsmanship and designed and decorated the rooms as if they were models. Every single room has it’s own mood; it varies from fresh and playful to bold and classic. While the graduates were designing the now under construction rooms, white noise took over and imagined the “birthplace for creations” as a clean slate where fashion and interiors could collide. By combining the rawness of the naked,unfinished rooms with unrefined fashion, both elements amplified each other to create a new layer; a new frequency.
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shoes: cos bodysuit: american apparel
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take a wal k on th e paint the black hole blacker
words by zornitsa angelova t
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I’ve just finished watching rare footage of Alexander McQueen in 1994, and I can’t stop thinking what’s recently happened t to the late designer interviewed in this video; how did sixteen years in the fashion machine amount to the tragic end of this incredible talent, who left a significant mark on contemporary fashion? The subject of this article is not Alexander McQueen, but he is definitely a part of it. His story perfectly portrays the other Most people can agree that fashion side of the fashion coin: the side that comes has always been about moving forward. No with the big fame, the high expectations and matter how well known you are, the moment the never ending strive for brilliance. Someyou take a step in the wrong direction, you are times all of this becomes too heavy of a burden for the fragile souls of the fashion genius. immediately disregarded. Alas, some souls are just more fragile than others in dealing And history shows that not everyone has the with the consistent pressure to keep up. titanic power of Atlas. Sometimes you slip In trying to cope with the competitive and along the way. harsh pressures of being a creative immersed Think of the people immersed in in a conceptual many big names turn their the industry. If you work in fashion you must eyes (and noses) to drugs. definitely love it. However, to be “make a name Alexander Mcqueen, who ended for yourself,” you don’t simply love your job and his life at the age of forty-one in 2010 was do it accordingly; you to dedicate yourself to said to have problems with mixed anxiety what you do completely. Literally completely: and depression. Supposedly cocaine and your career is your life. This means that you’ve tranquilizers were present in his blood on the overcome many obstacles, people and have day of his suicide. And psychiatrists say that proven your talent. Now, you have to maintain this combination is deadly dangerous and risky your career and come up with something new; when it comes to suicidal moods. Being in the something increasingly brilliant as everyone eye of not only the public, but the countless watches you through their telescopes. t models, make-up artists, photographers, artists, directors, where there is such a heavy focus on creativity, conceptualism, and appearance. Of course much of it is speculation, but isn’t there some kind of evident connection? And the other recent and unpl easant story of John Galliano, now off-duty designer of Christian Dior, helps paint the black picture of high-end fashion No judgment would be given to his case; the alcohol influence on the designer was obvious with his recent drunken, anti-semitic rants that have plastered headlines.
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As the iconic fashion journalist of The New York Times writes, ‘friends of Mr. Galliano, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, say that they have finally persuaded the troubled designer to go immediately into rehab — and that the pace of fashion today, and particularly the rigorous structure of a corporate fashion house, broke the fragile, artistic creator.’ Some people say fashion industry has become increasingly harsh in the recent years, which is the reason why it reflects so heavily on its prominent figures. But when looking back in fashion history, the great couturier Yves Saint Laurent was also struggling with substance abuse and depression. He is believed to be the last true couturier but even books are written on the speculations of his ‘dark side’, as in the recent t t biography by Marie-Dominique Lelièvre, titled ‘Saint Laurent, Mauvais Garçon.’ In the end, we’re all voyeurs to the inner workings of the minds of those we find brilliant. Although we’ll never know what truly went awry, we can all understand the pressure of creativity - especially in an industry that is perceived to be so superficial. Where does the strive for “true” brilliance end? That, we’ve yet to discover.
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t rash love song
white noise dumpster dives t words by juliette van oorschot
Many of us can recall times we’ve found something beautiful in a questionable location, and wondered why it was discarded by it’s previous owner. Either way, these are the items that somehow lost their There are these lost, beauty in the eye of the little gems in the big beholder. grey hole of fashion and mass production that are plainly much more valuable than every other mass-produced item. Why? Because they have a story.
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verena michels
The fox fur coat was the most valuable and beautiful item, and also seemed to have a personal story with it, ‘cause it was hand-stitched by the person who owned it before me. It is made of beautiful material, it’s nicely oversized and has pretty details, like the golden buttons on the pockets. Also the fact that it was customized meant some- thing to me. The owner stitched real fox fur around the collar, which I eventually removed myself again, but more for a practical reason. I came home late after school and saw there was a mountain of trash next to the garbage containers at my front door. So I parked my bike and took a closer look. There were clothes, bags, fabrics, and shoes. I first found a nice black jacket with fake fur (which t I didn’t want myself, but I gave to a friend of mine), then I picked some fabrics and finally I looked at the coat and was more than happy. There was a woman passing by and stopping as well, and she found and picked up a Louis Vuitton Bag.
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I wondered how this coat could end up in the dirt
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I wondered how this coat could end up in the dirt. I had the feeling that the owner would not get rid of it in this way on purpose! I was asking myself if there was a girl who maybe suddenly had to move or was kicked out? Did someone else throw her stuff on the street? Or maybe she just wanted to get rid of her stuff, which I actually cannot believe, ‘cause it was really good stuff. I still question that.
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photo by elina abdrakhmanova
imke de jon g My street treasure is kind of romantic. But first things first. I have found it on the streets in Amsterdam, when I crossed the tram tracks. I saw a shiny little thing. I pick it up in a rush because traffic was coming up. When I looked closely at it, I found out that it was two little golden lovebirds, on a twig. With eyes made out of purple gems. It’s probably just a nice necklace for any other person. To me it’s special because of the story. Hopefully I will not lose it.
The necklace is special to me because I found it on the day that a really nice guy and I had one of our first real dates. We went to Amsterdam to see a friend at an art fair. Finding such a sweet little symbol was actually pretty romantic. Also knowing that this guy and I had fallen in love and still are. It reminds me of a nice day and a nice start of a future. Maybe even that love can be such a simple thing that you can even find laying on the street, next to the tram tracks. Maybe in a romantic universe it was an omen for love. Love as easy as finding something on the street.
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Love can be such a simple thing that you can even find laying on the street
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enee dykeman photo by david clark
I have found many street treasures, I’m a bit of a dumpster diver! The street treasures I’m most excited about are a set of religious themed garment hooks. I once also found, now one of my favorite pieces of clothing, a tan leather vest with native themed buttons on the street.
I think that the interesting part about finding things on the street is that every object kind of has a story of its own. It feels more special than buying it from goodwill or somewhere. It’s like finding the item is almost more exciting than the item itself.
I like to hold on to things because they remind me of specific movements in my life, I think its important to be able to reminisce
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I think the clothing hooks are so special to me because they are hand made, which makes them truly unique. Actually because of them I am now obsessed with religious iconography. I thought they were awesome and didn’t understand why someone would want to get rid of them. I’m a bit of a collector. I like to hold on to things because they remind me of specific movements in my life, I think its important to be able to reminisce.
and all the particles in his mind floated to align...
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collage by katrina cervoni
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f ashion, defrof ste d free fashion: challenging consumerist habits
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I’ve always admired people who can manage to be on a diet. I was never able words by zornitsa angelova photo by simon devenyi to restrict myself for more than two days. However, this isn’t about food: it’s about fashion. I’ve never tried to set constrains from buying (if I don’t count the times when my bank account was empty, because that’s a different case altogether). There is a growing group of enthusiasts - closely connected to the fashion world- who are not restricted by their credit cards. But it’s the idea they believe in which keeps them away from consumption. It is not for a week or two, but for a whole year. It all started with the idea by Frank Jurgen Wijlens, a lecturer in Amsterdam Fashion Institute (AMFI) and Kate Fletcher, a sustainable designer and consultant. They saw consumerism as something increasingly meaningless and wanted to prove that fashion goes beyond simply buying. Laura de Jong, a graduate of the Fashion & Branding course at AMFI, decided to explore this matter and build an experimental platform that tests consumerist behavior and its connection to fashion. The free fashion Apparently, there turned out to be challenge was open for volunteers. more people who questioned the fast fashion lovers; whose hunger seemed to be insatiable. Today, everybody talks about sustainability, but let’s be honest: it’s pretty impossible to make any kind of significant change unless we modify our consumerism habits. This idea is the one that thirty people shared and collectively decided to give up shopping for 365 days. These people are truly fashion lovers: most of them work in the field, and others are studying in the perspective of fashion. The challenge rules are strictyou cannot buy any fashion item during this period.The restriction list includes things like accessories, lingerie and socks as well. Gift acceptance can get you out of the game, too. But how is the experiment now going? Are all of these fashion addicts drooling dreamily in front of the shopping windows of their favourite shops? Perhaps they rediscovered their wardrobes or saved themselves some time for other meaningful things besides a shopping spree.
It is interesting to follow the thoughts of the participants evolving over time, like how they welcome the new seasons or to read their comments on fashion weeks. I ask myself “what the hell would I do if I couldn’t buy new stuff for a whole year?” You begin contemplating the real values of fashion - and this is exactly what they want you to do. Are thirty people going to change the fashion system? Probably not. Not even one hundred, which is the current number of participants according to their website. To provoke an action as massive as changing consumerist behavior, you need a revolution. You need thousands of fashion ‘hunger’ strikers along the way. However, I suppose it has to begin somewhere.
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Nobody wants to be fooled anymore; less people want to be driven to overconsumption. Fast fashion is like McDonalds: it’s cheap, quick and delicious, but you often feel like you’ve taken a short cut (when you really wanted filet minion). There will always be growing number of people who would want to get back to real, good food. You cannot expect that everybody would enjoy the small portions, but at least your body wouldn’t feel as though it’s rotting. But once you kill a cow, you have to make a burger. Although the challenge participants are only at the beginning, they all plan to follow through with their intentions for the entire year. Of course, only time will tell the result. Like with the effective diet, it changes your eating habits forever.
boek ie woeki interview by robin straatman photos by katrina cervoni
As a tiny, modest shop on a quiet street in Amsterdam, Boekie Woekie parallels the essense of White Noise, because it compiles the geniune ideas and frequencies of real artists from around the world.
The shop sells a colourful array of books made by artists: all handmade and one-of-a-kind, and all containing the carefully conceptualized and obscure ideas that floated around in the minds of these artists.
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Boekie Woekie provides us with the possiblity to delve into these small yet remarkable ideas that were finally recorded in the form of a book. White Noise speaks to the owner and founder Jan Voss.
Where are you originally from? I’m from Germany and have been living in the Netherlands since 1977, I believe. What did you do before Boekie Woekie? I’m a visual and bookmaking artist who came to Holland for a Dutch woman. I always assumed that the reason for starting something as public as [the shop] is that in the beginning [of moving here], I really never had many friends. I didn’t know a lot of people, and I had to find something to fill my time with. A shop seemed to be a good solution. Coincidentally, I knew a group of people that had the same hobby as me: bookmaking. We came together and decided to open a shop, instead of leaving the box of books next to the road or under the bed. We presented ourselves in our tiny, tiny shop; it was smaller than a window, and could only fit two people.
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How have all of these books found their way here? In our home countries, we had friends with books and the word spread pretty quickly that there was a shop where these book were sold. The books literally came from everywhere; some from a tiny island next to Russia, some from African countries, and some came from India, Japan and Australia. Books made by artists are a small piece of the pie, it doesn’t really work. [The books] are often ‘oneof-a-kind’ and the subject can be something like: “birdhouse building”.
People come up with ideas that just won’t work in the real world. Because of that, you won’t have to adjust it for the real world. So everyone that’s selling their books here is not planning to be a wealthy man. Because if you have to appeal to everybody, you have to change god knows what. What do you consider as your most precious items at the shop? We have one thing that I really like: it’s a French catalogue from 1978, the artists who celebrated the 1.000.001 birthday of art. The price for this catalogue was 1.000.001 guilder, as long the guilder was there. Now we ask 1.000.001 euro’s for this book. Please don’t put this in your magazine, otherwise the bad guys will come here and rob the place. But you can probably find this book at eBay and pay 120 euro’s for it. Do you still make or publish books yourself? We have a couple of booklets in the make, and it’s going to grow quite a bit, I think. For example we have the booklet: “Het Andre Behr Pamflet” which is for those who are interested in the great ‘Behr Pamflet’. I have a friend in Zurich whose name is Andre Behr. This booklet title is really strangely spelled but nobody really gets it.
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People come up with ideas that just won’t work in the real world. Because of that, you won’t have to adjust it for the real world
How does Boekie Woekie differ from most commercial book shops? Boekie Woekie was not created to make lots of money. Of course we have to make some profit; we have to pay the rent, pay three full-time employee’s and every evening we like to have some beers on the table! Describe a typical Boekie Woekie visitor. We get a lot of English, American and Japanese costumers. Amsterdam is a very international city. I’m not suggesting that we live off of tourists...but actually, yes. We have a lot of friends coming over from several countries. And we also have a lot of people who have heard of Boekie Woekie, and made a special stop just to come to our shop. Now we have a lot of Japanese people who can’t return to Japan. They frequently visit our shop, have a quick look, buy a pile of books and leave the shop. I really think that they can create their own library with the amount of books they have bought from me!
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We don’t have this ‘ideal’ family where children can take over the shop. We were too adventurous for children at the time...
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What’s the future of Boekie Woekie? Do you have anyone specific in mind to take over the shop? I don’t know. It’s an empty spot. I really don’t know. Of course there are people out there who would be interested in this. I’m 66 years old, am I going to continue working for 5 years? Probably. Am I going to continue working for 10 years? Maybe. Because of my age, these things are starting to come to my attention. We don’t have this ‘ideal’ family where children can take over the shop. We were too adventurous for children at the time. So it’s still not clear if it will continue. What’s your view on the future of print? Do you see a future for books like the ones in your shop? Absolutely! Twelve years ago, there was a big breakthrough: the Internet. Lots of people that had the urge to say something were free to do so. They don’t need the permission of an author or editor-in-chief. Artists that work through the Internet are not subjected to listen to anyone: they don’t need permission from a supervisor. Every year we go to the New York Art Book Fair, this is the biggest art manifest in the world. Five years ago, there were maybe 100 representatives; now there are more than 700! The print market is still growing, you know why? Because it’s ‘modern and sexy’!
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you see the thing about love is it’s easy to find ; i fall in love almost everyday
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by kai-davey bellin toronto, canada
cut & past
words by katrina cervoni
c has been some there attention drawn towards whether or not another artist should be awarded with “creative credit” of something that they imagined and made, but someone else has ‘stolen’ and altered to form something new existing in a new context. But is it really theft; or is it simply borrowing? Whether it involves sampling songs from other musicians, or using another photographer’s images in a cut and paste c It’s not that this is a recent phencollage: this “theft” is happening everywhere omena: collage has been executed throughout in the creative industry right now. Either way, history by artists like Man Ray and his fellow all of this sampling and collaging of elements surrealists who took other photographer’s evolves to one purpose - and that is to conjure images from history and combined them to something original (even if it’s from something conceptualize new ones altogether. that has already been conceived and executed Fashion commits this crime all the by someone else). time (think of where Viktor & Rolf would be c without Elsa Schiaparelli!). It’s all part of that seemingly perpetual cycle of ideas. Most of us can agree that contemporary styles always reference the past in one way or another, and new trends and ideas are always reemerging from old ones. I see this borrowing of the past more as a reflection on history than blatant theft. Since everything and everyone these days is so fast paced - and because everyone c is so busy ogling at the future - it is refreshing to pause and look back for a moment. It’s fascinating to see or hear something we are familiar with in a way that we don’t immediately recognize. Recently,
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It’s a puzzling yet intriguing feeling to notice things out of their original context. For example, hearing a sample of a song you could have sworn was your favourite when you were fifteen, but you can’t quite be sure because it’s only a small segment of the original. It creates this strange sort of c displacement in our minds. We can pause and try to recollect from where we remember the original, and then form a completely new story based on its new reincarnation. Of course, parts of artist’s works are being taken and used without the permission of he or she whom created them. In many cases, the artists of the original piece never see or hear of this re-use of their work. Even with this in mind, the act of ‘stealing’ another person’s work is almost excusable because it c is used in a completely different manner than it was originally intended for. The combining of other artist’s works into new ideas and imagery seems to be a reasonable artistic progression for the decade that we’re living in. As visual collage As the artist points out, artist Joseba Elorza says, “I guess [the recent globalization definitely makes it easy for popularity of collage] is due to globalization collage to be accessible because through and how easily trends are created these days.” the Internet and other media, so much of both contemporary and historical art is made available to nearly anyone. Therefore, it seems only natural that with this surplus of images and information - people would pause at one point and reflect on what’s been done. This ‘borrowing’ is a reference to the past, while still keeping an eye on the future. Collage is about rescuing and uncovering some brilliant, lost image or idea from years ago, and presenting and altering it in a way that allows it to regain it’s potential and relevance in a completely new way. So, whether it’s stealing, borrowing, right, wrong, or both - in the words of George Orwell, “he who controls the past controls the future.”
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i’ll bleach you r memorie s styling by zornitsa angelova photos by elina abdrakhmanova
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dress: rules by mary, sunglasses: vintage
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trousers: individuals, blazer: zornitsa angelova
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cape: individuals
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nd come out clean...
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a.p.c.
a convoy of numbers eighteen wheels spin different directions, alone, side by side in the million-megaphone ocean,
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swinging with the low tide while there’s no land in sight,
we all stand, disbanded and locked in at full volume, projecting a snowstorm mosaics for no one, anonymous audience, a wash of originals who shut out the bad news, talk about greys not blues, settle for confusion over abuse, a
we all call out with our own simple answer, a collectively fragmented, and nobody can listen, as all surrounding conversation bleeds into poem by peter beales toronto, canada one.
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margaret howell
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